Knuckling to it

e-Learning project meeting in a side room in Catty Infimary (overspill from a health education information presentation). The Reference Librarians from Dutch Bend are in fine form, much to the irritation of Henry Irving, the Local Studies Librarian. They start with the usual line:

"We're far too busy to do any of this work. We're snowed under as it is."

"That's OK. You just send the stuff to us and my team will get on with it."

"But how will you be doing it?"

"We'll just get on with doing the work."

I happen to know that the Catty staff who are camped out at Dutch Bend have spent the time since Christmas wondering just what the Dutch Bend Reference Library does besides photocopy reams of paper for the local antiquarian society. Not that this is reflected in the photocopying income, mind you.

Yet again, our noses are rubbed in their professional interest in providing family history services. Right up to the point when one of them pipes up:

"Of course, I don't know anything about these family history web sites..."

They've only had access to the internet for a decade and we've only subscribed to a couple for the past two years.

Up the pole

Providence has a sense of comic timing. Yardley Barnbrush is the council's Disabled Persons' Access Officer, taking the lead on all things Disabled Discrimination Act. He can be a little enthusiastic and is given to arriving at service points unannounced to throw his weight about. He it was who tried to ban all the pink books from Noddy Library because "they aren't high enough contrast for visually-impaired people." Today he decided to visit Spadespit Library.

Kelsie was minding her own business at the counter when she noticed a bloke she'd never seen before standing in the doorway with a big stick in his hands. Holding it horizontally he then did a passable impression of a bluebottle on a window. Forward he'd march, the ends of the stick would clatter against the dooway and thus repulsed he'd try again.

"I can't get in!"

"Pardon me?"

"I can't get in."

"Why not?"

"The stick won't go through the doorway."

"Why don't you turn the stick around ninety degrees? You'll be able to get in then."

"That's not the point."

"What is the point?"

"The doorway's not wide enough."

"Wide enough for what?"

"If a disabled person tried to come into this library they wouldn't be able to come in because the doorway's not wide enough."

At which point a lady on an electric buggy drove in and parked in from of the counter to return her books.

The front of me sings tenor, the rest sings baritone

Some disquiet about the progress on the building works at Epiphany Library. Bronwyn and Doreen are uneasy about the disabled toilets as it seems that the only support given to a user trying to get up off the bog is the sink. It strikes them that this isn't entirely ideal.

The building project manager disagrees and proceeds to give them a demonstration.

"...now just suppose that I've soiled myself."

Labels

It isn't just us. I'm just back from a meeting with colleagues in Bencup. One of their libraries is being wound down ready for work on access to the building, with the inevitable consequences.

The piles of boxes are classified by their labels:

• Books
• Old books
• Very old books

A Vimto on the rocks

Day off, thank God! Visiting friends in Noddy I notice one of the reasons for the local yob culture: a notice in a shop window.

We sell alcohol from 6am

I wondered where all the drunks littering the bus station came from. I'd assumed they'd all been at a humongous all-night party.

Oh blimey O'Reilly

Real life enquiry in Helminthdale Lending:

"Have you got that book? It's red and has a woman on the front."

Credit where it's due: we've got it and they were given it!

One law for the rich...

There are those people who aren't allowed to go for their lunch at the same time without prior agreement confirmed a week beforehand, even though they're entitled to be out for lunch at any time for as long as they want between the hours of noon and two pm.

It hasn't escaped their notice that both Group Librarians are on leave this week and it hasn't gone down well.

Kevin Musgrove is appearing at the Old Vic as a jar of vapo-rub

I'm in the middle of the training sessions for the call centre staff. Despite the first-thing-in-the-morning panic about access to our systems most of the PCs are connected up. This has been effected by my loaning them some of my software licences (Catty and Epiphany are closed for building works so I'm using theirs) and the director responsible for the call centre, who also happens to be in charge of the software auditors, has leant on people to persuade them to load a dozen unlicensed copies of the client software on these PCs for one day only(!!!) An utter shambles.

The good news is that the call centre staff are grateful to meet anybody who doesn't want to drop a load of shit in their laps and then run as far away from the customers as possible. We seem to be getting on just nicely.

Filling

Definitely that time of year.

"I'm ordering some more new chairs," says T.Aldous. "What colour do you want?"

"I'm not bothered. I'll have whichever colour's the cheapest."

"I'll get someone to send you the swatch."

This job calls for pleasing personality

The Booksale Coordinator's job is, allegedly, currently being shortlisted with a view to interviews taking place at the end of the month (closing date for application being early last November). None of us have any idea what this person will actually be doing in real life, least of all the Acquisitions Team who will be being line-managed by this new bod (though don't feature in this post's responsibilities in the job description).

Co-incidentally, Jim's just called for ideas for the next regular monthly staff newsletter, which come out roughly once a quarter or whenever T.Aldous goes on holiday and can't put the blocks on publication.

Jim,
As both the Booksale Coordinator and The Job That Dare Not Speak Its Starting Date are both completely new roles in the library service would it be an idea to have short profiles of the jobs in the next newsletter so that staff could have an idea what to expect from them?
Kevin

What a good idea! I'll write something now.
Jim

You mean you know?!? We've been wondering for months.

Oh no, I've not the first idea either. I'll make something up and then see what happens when it gets to the vetting stage.

Off your trolly

The Acquisitions Team are asked if there's anything need buying out of the end-of-financial-year-spendfest.

"We could do with replacing the trollies: the wheels have been dodgy for a while and the shelves aren't to clever either. And we could do with a flat-bed trolly for bringing boxes in from the fire escape corridor."

"We won't be able to get them out of this year's money; it takes eight weeks for delivery for them. I'll get them ordered in April out of next year's money."

"That's precisely what you said last February."

Place settings

"I won't say I told you so,"

I tell Jim.

"Oh I wouldn't mind so much except that four of them have been in a meeting for the past two hours to discuss what shelving to buy for Epiphany Library and they're no nearer a decision now than they were at Christmas."

Getting to be a habit with me

I must stop it.

Mary was soliciting my sympathy on the probable underspend on lending stock this year.

"Last payments go into the system in the third week in March. Usually we've got up to the first week in April to get it spent up. We'll be having an underspend because of that."

"Yes but you have had all year."

Not too heavy on the banjos

There are times when school playground analogies are inescapable in this place. T.Aldous, and to an objectively much lesser extent Mary, are in lumber because of an underspend in a key area. (Which is to say that T.Aldous has blocked expenditure out of one of our budgets and is lining Mary up to take the rap for it as per usual).

"Mary, let's get together and decide what we're telling this Brenda person."

Mary knows precisely what's going on and is being quiety uncooperative.

"I'm busy at the moment helping the girls with these orders. We won't meet our additions figures if they're not done."

Tug

One of the item's in this week's Global Newsletter from the council's Chief Executive is a call for teams to participate in a tug-o-war contest this coming May Day.

"It's simple and fun, all you need is six people pulling in the same direction."

Being giddy and impulsive I pointed this out to Mary and T.Aldous.

"That's a coincidence: there's six of you in Policy Team. Why don't you enter, it would be a good bit of team-bonding."

Tortoise vindaloo

I've sent Jim some detailed proposals as to how we could address the new raft of performance indicators.

"Aren't you coming to the meeting?"

"I'll lay you odds it isn't going to happen."

Going local

Catty Township Committee has decided to put together a "Catty Now & Then" booklet to celebrate the 25th anniversary of something I've never heard of. Jim got wind of this and sent an email to Policy Team a couple of weeks ago.

"Have we any pictures of Catty Library that we could let them use?"

Evidently they decided it was a good idea. Jim followed it up with another email to Policy Team earlier this week:

"This is getting a bit urgent now. We could do with some old pictures. Any ideas?"

This time he had the sense to cc. the email to Hetty at Catty Library and to Henry Irving in Local Studies. Henry immediately contacted the Committee and arranged for them to visit Local Studies and have their pick of the pictures. As Henry says:

"Why not just get in touch with me in the first place?"

Slow down, you move too fast

Jim's trying, for the third time, to arrange a meeting with Policy Team, myself, Frog and Nancy to go through the new raft of performance indicators that apply from 1st April and come up with plans/strategies/desperate bits of straw-clutching to make sure that

(a) We're collecting the data in the first place; and
(b) The results show us in a good light, ideally with improvements in key areas.

Frog, Nancy and I have made ourselves available for the previous two attempts and I think we're up for this later one, too. The problem, as always, lies in Policy Team. Jim tackles T.Aldous about the subject:

"We really need to prioritise this meeting so that we can sort out what we're doing for the beginning of April."

"Can't it wait until the end of March?"

Priceless

A colleague sends me a gem of a memo from his Library Director:

Subject: The great "black pen" controversy...

…doesn’t exist except in the minds who are trying to make a big deal out of it. First – black pens are more expensive than blue pens and using blue pens makes it easier to determine if a document is an original. The decision was just that simple and it makes no sense to stock both.

Additional decisions like this regarding office and library supplies will continue on a case-by-case basis. We will condense our supply offerings so that we can make the best use of our supply budgets.

Hi there! I'm Dick Van Dyke, hope you are, too!

Henry Irving's dead brassed off. He's spent all afternoon in a meeting trying to agree the metadata structure on the new collection management system that's to include the collections from the art gallery, museum and local studies. He's been struggling to get the museum staff to get their head around the fact that the public will be searching this system (which is how they got the funding for the thing) and that perhaps they could bear this in mind.

A case in point: a bone china tea service. You or I might want to find the whole service and be able to relate the cups with the saucers with the teapot, etc.

"They can do that by comparing the accession number prefixes," say the museum staff. "There's no need to create a parent record connecting all these items."

Even as he speaks Henry gets pinker and pinker in rage.

"If I hear one more bloody idiot tell me that they're a professional I'll scream! If they have to tell you they're professional they can't be."

I seem to have heard this before somewhere. ☺

The joy of shared services

School holidays are busy times for public libraries and many valuable customer transactions -- visits, issues and events -- are chalked up in these periods.

So what joy to find that the head teacher at Pottersbury Road has decided that this is a good time to knock through our staff room to make a SureStart activity suite (we'll still be paying the same ground rent), and that Glass Road's having the road up to the library dug up and resurfaced.

Let us know when you're being Ofsted-ed, guys so that we can piss up your performance targets for you.

Sherbet dabs

It's starting to look a bit dicey for our meeting the national stock additions and stock expenditure performance targets and our stock health target's looking iffy because we've enough money to buy hardbacks and so don't buy "enough" paperbacks for the Nabobs' liking.

Despite this, we'll be meeting the stock replenishment targets because we've so many libraries closed with their stock boxed up in storage that there's a significant dent in the "available stock" figure within the calculation.

Ideally the dent would have been unnecessary because there'd been a programme of stock-editing throughout the year. As it is, the Group Librarians are desperately trying to catch up with decades' worth of anti-stock-editing and can't whip the tatty, broken-down and stagnant stock off the shelves fast enough. One of the reasons being that T.Aldous has instructed that stock that's been edited has to be transferred to other libraries and not put into booksale. (eh?) The reason for that being that boxes of booksale books have been skittering around the borough for the past umpteen years and have collected enough Air Miles to travel first class to Wollameroo. Rather than chalk up more mileage, T.Aldous has decided to stem the flow of "new" old books, to improve our chances of hitting the booksale income targets. (you may need a cold flannel on your neck at this stage) One of the other reasons why the stock-editing can't progress is that most places are full of boxes of stock to be transferred to other libraries from libraries that have moved into smaller premises or, in the case of Helminthdale Lending, slung out a pile of children's library shelving without buying anything to replace it. Dutch Bend is so full of transfers to closed libraries that the stock to be transferred from the branch libraries in the Dutch Bend and Catty townships has all been sent to Helminthdale to deal with, together with the stock from the Helminthdale, Milkbeck and Spadespit townships which are stock-edited from there anyway. When stock-editing's being done, of course.

So we're doing very well, really.

Stock query

An item's been sent down to the Acq. Team by Helminthdale Lending.

"This is the wrong book for this language set."

Dead right it is:

• The book's a Romanian phrasebook accessioned in 2002;
• The cassette case is a Romanian language course accessioned in 1998; and
• The cassettes are a Ukranian language course accessioned in 1999.

Infinite joy of health

Seth's turn to be ill: he's got pneumonia (lucky it's not Weil's disease). With the council's strategy on the control of infectious diseases ("get back to work early so that you can be sure to spread it round") we can be sure of a full roster at the tiller this month.

Overture and beginners

There are worse project managers than librarians!

The call centre goes live in a couple of weeks (brilliant timing on the council's part). Milton, Bronwyn and I have spent the past couple of weeks constructing help sheets, FAQs and model scripts and I've constructed a pile of HTML pages taking the call centre staff through the recursive elements of your typical library enquiry where a customer wants to renew overdue books and it turns out that we need to correct their address because the notices have been returned to sender "not known at this address." I've done some work with the operational manager to work out the training requirements and pencil together a training schedule. We're getting there.

Except for a pile of panicky emails and 'phone calls this afternoon from the project managers who want to know how to give the call centre staff access to the library management system. Milton told them in principle in writing last summer and I told them in detail, including prices and suppliers, twice in October and once again in December. What have they been doing? Drawing increasingly inaccurate flow charts which they send us once a week, we correct and they ignore, that's what.

Last year the council outsourced its business management processes so as to improve its project management. Obviously getting its money's worth.

Piss artist

"You've hurt your hand Seth."

"Yes, I've just decked a bloke in the shopping precinct."

"How come?"

"I was just walking along, minding my own business when along comes this bloke with his trollies and underkecks round his ankle pissing everywhere. He shouts: 'hello mate!' at me and come over and tries to piss on me. So I walked off, I wasn't having any of it. And he does no more than he starts running after me, still pissing. What could I do? I turned round and thumped him."

"Hell. What happened next?"

"The security guards came up and said: 'what's up, Seth?' I told them and they said: 'you go back to the library and we'll sort this bugger out.' They've done him for drunk & disorderly, anti-social behaviour, pissing in public and indecent exposure."

These are the people we have to consult on service delivery.

Fill

Good news! The fire exit corridor is now full of forty-odd new chairs.

It's that time of the financial year again.

Standing in the rain all day

Frog's stuck outside Roadkill Library waiting to get in ready for a ten o'clock children's event, it being half-term. Getting a bit nervous, he rang Dutch Bend to make sure that somebody was available to let him in, it being half-term. Dagmar answers the 'phone...

"I'll just find out what's happening, hang on a minute. By the way, we didn't get any scissors with our activity table materials at Raccoonville. Will we be getting scissors?"

"You should have got scissors."

"We only got two pairs last summer."

"Is anybody coming to open up the library?"

He was rescued by the arrival of Dotty Trampoline, who'd been held up by the traffic.

Void

The fire exit corridor's been empty for more than a week now and it's very unnerving. The Acq. Team are getting increasingly worried because no stock's coming in and this is traditionally the time of year when it's expected that they'll get three month's additions added to stock in the space of two weeks.

Not helped by Mary's response to Group Librarians' telling her that they've not been able to use the supplier's e-commerce site on their PCs:

"Well, it works just fine on my PC."

The only critical assessment of the French Nouvelle Vague that some families have seen for weeks on end

Oh lovely. Our online subscription services have stopped working on the public PCs. It took the work of a moment to discover that the council's IT people have changed the IP addresses without warning us again.

Life's too short for spun sugar

I've been having another look at the new suite of performance indicators that have been wished on us by central government. They've simplified it by doubling the number of indicators we'll be measured by. And we've (mostly I've) got to set everything up for collecting the data from 1st April. Good job I've nothing else to do, then.

An emetic on the cheap

How on earth does a whole town centre smell of sick? When I got in I thought that a lorry might have shed its load of pig slurry, but no, the smell's not right for slurry, it really is vomit.

If this is how the day's starting I think I want to go home.

I'm waiting for the film to come

I was supposed to be at a communication strategy meeting with our esteemed Policy Team. I turned up at the alloted time and place and there was nobody there. Getting back to my desk I emailed Jim, who organised the thing, to ask if it had been cancelled and nobody had told me.

Quite some time later, Jim responds:

"Oops! Sorry. We moved the meeting downstairs because we couldn't all make it. I forgot to tell you.

"I probably did you a favour anyway: I thought we'd best start with a run-through of the points raised in the last meeting and then move on to agreeing an action plan for getting things done. T.Aldous said he couldn't come, then he did. We spent three hours hearing the back-story on each and every thing in the list."

And no action plan to worry about!

Brief encounter

There's a touch of scandal in the air in the lending library. A young couple sneaked into the "mother and baby" toilets (the one with the changing table) and stayed in there for fifteen minutes. Much tutting and similar all round.

Me, I was impressed by fifteen minutes in the circumstances. Other than that, so long as they left the premises as they would wish to find them I'd rather they were in there than in the carpark or the fire escape stairs.

"After all, everybody's had adolescent sexual experiences in a library, haven't they?"

Apparently not.

The count was a beautiful dancer

Work continues apace at Catty Library. What that pace is escapes me for now, but apace it is.

It has been discovered that the frontage isn't falling off the rest of the building. The rest of the building is falling off the frontage. This comes as a great relief as it means that the subsidence in the north half of the building won't get much worse and will, in the course of time, be matched by the subsidence in the south half of the building. Which means that for some wonderful moment the floor of the library will be level for the first time since 1923. Meanwhile, work has been done on the floor to try to even out the eccentricities of slope with the West Col being pretty much filled in with the spoil from the North Face of the Children's Library. What was once a poorly-defined indoor crown green bowls pitch has become a classic inclined plane. We may need to set up a funicular railway to help the old dears get to the Family History section.

The council's Heritage Planning Officer has decreed that the floor shall be re-laid with parquet flooring (the old one was removed during a salvage campaign to help build Spitfires for our brave boys in the late unpleasantness). I suppose his thinking is that the parquet is more likely to flex during the subsidences than would a roll of linoleum.

Proliferation

Frog and I have just done the maths and it works out that there are more central-government-directed give-a-child-a-book programmes being channelled through our distribution services than there are board books on the shelves at Windscape Library.

The latest one involves his having to buy fifteen grand's worth of picture books by next Wednesday week. This runs in parallel to the boxes of books being distributed to schools by the Library Service as part of the Fooked Up project and all the other stuff we're trying to be in denial about.

Needless to say, the Acq. Team are delighted at the idea of forcing through a few thousand picture books in a rush at the end of a financial year where it looks like there'll be another attempt at buying, receiving and paying for one quarter's new stock in two weeks and with long-standing vacancies still left unfilled. Especially as none of this stuff counts as "additions to stock" in the new performance indicators.

John Snagge's been on at me about my dishpan hands

Another salutary lesson in the generation gap.

Over the past six months we've actually started filling vacancies at the front line, which mean that having been one of the younger members of staff for the past decade and a half I'm suddenly hovering close to the median age. Which means that most of my cultural references are about seventy years too old for a lot of the people I'm dealing with. While you and I, dear reader, are comfortable with a world of Gibson Girls, Stanley Baldwin and cigarette card portraits of Henry Kendall some of these people are too young to have seen Timmy Mallett on "Wackaday."

Lucky buggers.

Communitaire

Coming back from a meeting I give Eileen the Reference Librarian a pile of European Commission information booklets and publications catalogues.

"No thanks, I don't believe in it."

Futile attempt at problem-solving

I suggest to Mary that we use the spare PC on the desk that once was Jimmy Huddersfield's for Maybelle should she ever ascend to The Job That Dare Not Speak Its Start Date. No. That's for the Book Sale And Filling In On The Enquiry Desk and A Bit Of Reader Development In Between Stock Librarian when they start. It was only advertised three months ago so we could be looking at interview dates some time in June. Factor in another six months for deciding on a start date and the PC will be up for replacement anyway.

Just gently swaying in the breeze suspended by my toes

Mary has re-identified the desk to be used by Maybelle Googly when she eventually takes on The Job That Dare Not Speak Its Starting Date. It needs to be excavated of the boxes brought over from Epiphany Library last month. Mary tells me that we'll be taking a PC off the Group Librarians for Maybelle to use. The fact that the three Group Librarians can't get to either of their PCs most of the time because they keep being appropriated by Policy Team members who don't want to go to their own offices isn't factored in.

Meanwhile, the Assistant Chief Executive keeps asking Warner Baxter why none of the project money's been spent yet.

Timing

Some things never change...

Mary's just popped in with an interesting bit of paper. It's a specification for one of next year's service delivery agreements, due to be agreed and signed off by last Friday. It's been on T.Aldous' desk since 15th January.

"Can you just check that it's all technically possible for me. I know a lot of it isn't really probable but you know how it is."

Charm numbers

Only in Helminthdale (I hope!)...

Helminthdale Council is setting up a call centre which will be the telephone user interface to all services in the new financial year. So as not to make people think this is a remote, faceless call centre the council has decided that the call centre won't have a single telephone number. Any customers using the call centre must first of all determine which of a dozen service groupings they need to contact and ring the appropriate number.

Transformational government seems to have passed Helminthdale by.

Music While You Work

It occurs to me that one of the major failings of this workplace is the lack of a backing track. This could compromise our hopes of one day being made into a major motion picture. I expect every other library has backing music (and sell copies of the soundtrack on CD to unwary customers).

Spoke too soon

Wandering into what should be the community meeting room upstairs in Helminthdale Library I stop and stare at all the boxes of books stacked up in the corner. These aren't booksale books; this is the stock that Doreen found 'inconvenient' when they were rearranging the library last autumn.

I hope that these aren't more piles of stuff that's allegedly on the shelves as far as the Catalogue's concerned.

I wonder how many have been reserved. This library's reservation fill time figures have been fairly bad since it re-opened. Almost certainly a coincidence.

Glove your library

I enjoyed this posting on the "@ The Library" blog. I think we've all been there at some time or another.

The nation speaks!

I asked you "What are your predictions for Helminthdale in 2008?"

You spoke:

• Everyone will live happily ever after 0%
• A library will be closed by an influx of badgers 6%
• Somebody will say: "Sorry, that was entirely my fault" 6%
• Library management will make a decision 13%
• A library will be closed when the floor caves in 13%
• T.Aldous will be awarded the O.B.E. 13%
• A reality TV show will be used to fill staff vacancies 13%

And the option of choice:

• Somebody will say: "I was on leave that week" 53%

Sucker bet really.

Gardener's world

Frog tells me that the movie prop by the back door is the old "reading tree" that was in the display window upstairs.

I won't repeat my response but it featured the letter F.

"We had that in the window?!?"

"We took the precaution of hiding it under a tarpaulin."

Bleak

For the first time in human memory the fire exit corridor is empty. There is absolutely nothing there: the Acq. Team shifted through all the incoming boxes of new stock (helped by all the incoming boxes of new stock being three boxes of picture books and a business directory); T.Aldous gave Seth permission to get rid of the stack of old (very) bentwood chairs and the bookmarks have been distributed to the four winds.

There is a bleak, majestic beauty to the corridor but we are not used to it and cling to the walls for security as we walk along it.

Morbidity

I was late leaving the sausage factory so left by the stage door which is the fire exit. Which is how I came to have the shock of my life as I bumped into what appeared to be a relict prop from a particularly cheap and nasty 1960s horror movie.

I actually don't know what this thing is, and I'm not sure that I shouldn't be grateful for that. I'll try to describe it. It was about six foot tall and apparently covered in a rather nasty, mottled, flesh-coloured cheap plush velvet. But for a revolting flourish of morbid growths about the crown the whole thing could have been an object of phallocentric worship left out in the rain on the doorstep of a charity shop for twenty years or more. Utterly, utterly revolting.

I pray to God it's being chucked out and not chucked in.

Pet's corner

Staff room's on form today. This is peculiar on so many levels I may have to enter it for the egg and spoon race. Any further comment from me would be entirely superfluous.

"...and her friend's upset because she had to have her snake put down."

"What for?"

"Well, it was one of those boa constrictor type things and it just wasn't eating. She tried feeding it with its usual favourites but it didn't want to know. Couldn't be tempted. It just would'nt eat.

"Well this went on for a month or so and she was getting worried about it. The peculiar thing is that one night she woke up and found that the snake had got out of its tank and was just sitting at the bottom of the bed staring at her. She got up and put it back in the tank and thought no more about it.

"Well, a couple of weeks later she decided that the snake's not eating must mean it was ill or something so she took it to the vet. And he said: 'I'm sorry but I'll have to put your snake to sleep. It's deliberately starving itself so that it can eat you.'"

"Good grief, I've never heard of that before!"

"That's what he said, apparently. What gets me is how he could be so sure of it. Even if he were an expert on snake psychology he must have some evidence to go off. Perhaps there's loads of cases of pet snakes eating women in Pardendale but it just doesn't get in the papers."

As they say on Crimewatch: "don't go having nightmares."

Serendipity

We were talking about the unfrocked Vicar of Stiffkey who died when he was mauled by a lion (he'd been unfrocked for being "the prostitues' parson") but I was damned if I could remember his name.

Stap me, I picked up a copy of 'The Chap' from the newsagents and there's an article about the chappie, with pictures.

Life is good.

As described on The Third Programme

Norbert Spudulike rings from Dutch Bend.

"Here's a funny thing: I've just issued a CD called 'An Evening With The Brighouse & Rastrick Band' to a customer but it shows on the system as 'Swan Lake.' I've just looked up the barcode on the system and it's 'Swan Lake' on the catalogue. The CD cover's got a brass band on it. There's not a brass band in 'Swan Lake' is there?

One word, repeated, as per Alice In Wonderland, springs to mind..."

I check it up. On our system, if the item barcode's not recognised it asks you if you want to create a temporary catalogue record with just enough information in it to let it get issued to the borrower who presented it.

So somebody scanned the barcode on a copy of "An Evening With The Brighouse & Rastrick Band," was prompted to create a temp. cat. of the item in their hand and they gave it the title "Swan Lake."

The word Mescalin springs to mind...

The auditorium is completely full of Orson Wells

T.Aldous has told Seth that the boxes of booksale books in the meeting room need to be redistributed to no more than three boxes' height for health and safety reasons.

"Is that three little boxes or three big boxes?"

"It doesn't matter. Three boxes high."

"What about all those boxes that are stacked six-high in the fire exit?"

"Just get on with the meeting room."

Definition

Sometimes the obvious needs pointing out.

"You need to get rid of all those web links on the Library Catalogue. It isn't a search engine you know."

"Actually, that's precisely what a library catalogue is."

We band of brothers

Things are fraught at Roadkill. We had expected the boys to deliver and install the new PCs yesterday, as per a sequence of emails Milton's received from the IT Section's project management team.

"Thank God you've arrived!" said Milton, "I was expecting you yesterday."

"The project was only started yesterday. First we knew about it was just after lunchtime. Luckily we had a few PCs in the store room that we could bring over. We've not got enough to do the public desks and the counter, though. We should be able to get some more tomorrow."

Click

Part of today's incoming is a printed web page. Yet another of those local leisure & listing sites, this page being a listing for Tench Road Library.

Attached post-it note:

Dorrie
The address on this page is wrong. Can something be done about it?
Evelyn.

Attached note:

Kevin,
Can something be done?
Dorrie

I went to the web site at the URL supplied.

I clicked on the button marked "Details wrong? Let us know."

I let them know.

Saga holiday

Roadkill Library's closed while we shift it over to its new home and we got to wondering about opening ceremonies. All the famous celebrities [that's not a redundancy in today's world -- I've never heard of any of the celebrities on any of the celebrity reality shows on telly this week] that come from round here couldn't wait to bugger off out of it first chance they got.

"What did we do at Glass Road?"

"We got the daughter of the first borrower at the old Glass Road Library. She's about 108 now. She lives in Garstang so we had to fly her in to Burnley International Airport then stand for a taxi over here."

"That'll be why I didn't see anything about it in the paper."

Frankly my dear....

Raccoonville's been closed for a couple of weeks while a new bog's installed and is likely to be closed for another couple. Today I get a call from Wilma, the branch manager there.

"What's happening with Raccoonville's reservations?"

In her shoes I'd have asked before I shut up shop. I don't have the first idea myself and have stopped caring about it

Woefully misguided

Freddie Jumbuck, the chap what runs the council switchboard, is a lovely old bloke, as camp as Christmas and "known by the appropriate authorities" for his recreational use of public conveniences. I only mention this because it was he who took this call this morning:

"Are you the council's Morality Officer?"

"No dearie. We haven't got a Morality Officer. Could I help at all?"

"I want to complain about that poster on Cattermole Street with the woman almost falling out of the front of her frock."

"Ooh, yes. I know what you mean, dear. I'll pass on your complaint to the proper authorities."

My constellated hate bears the black sun of melancholy

I've found out why a search on the council's web site for "Senebene Library" gives me a Best Value report on schools on the Senebene Estate; planning applications in Senebene; Traffic Act Orders in Library Crescent and, finally, the page about Senebene Library. Despite my embedding all the appropriate keywords into the page.

The search engine just looks at the first thousand words, counts the frequency of each and reports accordingly.

That's right, in this day and age we're using a context-free word counter as a search engine.

I query this with the Web Team.

"You need to think about the information you put on your web pages."

I see.

Senebene Library is a library on the Senebene Estate.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 20.00 on Monday.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 17.30 on Tuesday.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 13.00 on Wednesday.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 18.00 on Thursday.
Senebene Library is open from 10.00 to 17.30 on Friday.
Senebene Library is open from 09.30 to 16.00 on Saturday.
See Janet.
See John.
See Janet see John.
See John see Janet.
Janet sees John.
John sees Janet.
See Barry the dog.
See Janet see Barry the dog.
See John see Barry the dog.
'Woof!' says Barry the dog.

I think I'm having one of me turns.

Hold their manhoods

A conversation upon the breaking up of a meeting with colleagues from another library authority:

"Ooh that woman does irritate me!"

"I know what you mean. If only she wasn't so bloody pious."

"Don't let that kid you: it's not so long ago that she and Janey Spindly used to go down to Obchester Docks to pick up Russian sailors."

It ain't gonna rain no mo'

Pansy rings up about a problem with the People's Network and follows through with:

"You buggers all went home early last night, didn't you?"

"Did we?"

"Yes, you all went home when Helminthdale Library shut at 5 o'clock." [Monday's our late night, when all our libraries are open until 8pm]

"Did we? I wasn't here then. Did anybody tell the other libraries?"

"No. The only reason I knew was because Mary rang me about something else and said in passing that the library was closed and they'd all gone home."

I can't begin to comment on this.

And gentlemen in England now-a-bedShall think themselves accurs'd they were not here

Policy Team have decamped, unannounced, to an off-site meeting. Apparently, they're meeting the healthy reading co-ordinator over in Crippen Terrace Social Centre. We'd been rather hoping they were being sectioned en bloc. Ah well.

Mary was to have been their guide but she was nowhere to be seen at the appointed time. She'd earlier rung the Acq. Team to ask when the recycling bins had to be put out and then announced that she was going for a shower (I assume this wasn't a works call).

PT, having milled about the foyer like more-than-usually-disorganised sheep for quarter of an hour, decided to make their way over despite the fact that none of them were sure of the way so that they'd only be slightly-ish late.

A couple of minutes later Mary turned up.

"You've only just missed them, they've started making their way over."

"I thought they might."

Rather than following on, catching them up and guiding them to their destination she went into her office.

Made a couple of 'phone calls.

Came out to try and tell Noreen that this week's licorice wasn't as nice as last week's and we should keep the wrapping paper for it. (Presumably so that we can mount it on a spike to warn off potential offenders.)

Fussed about the photocopier.

And finally put her coat back on to go to the meeting.

The gene pool needs a little chlorine

I went home straight from a meeting rather than returning to the sausage factory so I decided to get the bus home. I got the bus that goes down Cattermole Street and round the houses a bit (evenings aren't light enough for the Dutch Bend bus). It's a longer ride but there's not the same lunatic element to the patronage.

Usually.

"How much is it for the dog? I don't usually bring the dog on a bus but I've got to take it to the vet's. It's got chronic diarrhoea."

But I never drink the waterIn case it gives me the shits

The Town Hall's been evacuated because it's raining.

OK, it's pissing down but why is the council going home? Our first thoughts were worries about flood. It would have to be an apocalyptic downpour that would transform the drunkard's trickle that is the River Helminth into a raging torrent that would threaten all ten stories of the Town Hall. So we got scurrying round to see if there was any gopherwood on the premises.

It turned out not to be necessary. They were all sent home because of the traffic problems caused by localised flooding of Bencup Old Road and the Scatter Bypass.

Remarkable.

Two roads taken out by rain for an afternoon: everybody in the Town Hall go home.

Whole town in gridlock for nine months because all eight hub points connecting the main roads with the inner ring road are being dug up to convert the roundabouts into traffic light-controlled junctions and the traffic light-controlled junctions into roundabouts: business as usual.

We few, we happy few

Alas! One of our frequent friendly correspondents, The Topiary Cow, has fallen victim to network guys infected with the English local authority attitude to the Internet in general and Blogger in particular.

They can pick us off one by one but we can still make little fists in our pockets.

Harness the power of the electric corset

I'm having a bit of a fulminate about the council's lack of progress, or corporate blocking-of-progress, with our web services. My butty bar companion smiles grimly.

"Executive Directorate Group cut the funding because: 'the internet isn't business-critical'."

Half leather binding and bold lower case

Interesting event to come at Grimley Library. This library's not received any new books for a while, but we have a thousand stacked up and we will be inviting customers to come along and unpack them for us. What fun.

(No matter that they have already been unpacked, received and invoiced, updated on the catalogue, discharged and made available on the system and then repacked ready to be unpacked!)

Our Health and Safety bloke is having fits over this, even to the extent he wants us to do a risk assessment to the reputation of the Council! Obviously even he realises this is a little odd.

For days and days among the trees

About this time last year the Books For Sharing Collection was bought for Helminthdale Library and put through the receipt and invoicing process by the Acquisitions Team as an urgent. For the next ten months it sat around in boxes, generally getting in the way of the Acq. Team. Imagine their relief when it finally got taken upstairs to the lending library...

For the past two months this collection has sat in the lending library's lift lobby, generally hidden by an assortment of silk pot plants that turned up for no apparent reason before Christmas.

Job well done, I say.

Controversy

The new MLA guidance on controversial materials in the public library stock has been issued and circulated.

We don't survive past point two: "Every library authority should have a stock selection policy."

A short, sharp visit from the Slap Fairy

Youth Information Services have just announced they have renamed themselves "Encounter!" I never really knew what they did before, but at least the title gave me a clue, now it is just a cunning plot to make sure no one has a clue what they do, so they can pretty much please themselves.

As they always have done.

They keep pushing work our way "as we have no staff to do it" yet have this week banished one of their number to work on a rota basis around the branch libraries as they can't stand her in the office. I must admit she is not my favourite person, but then there is a rogue's gallery of them in there. Thing is no one told the branches they were getting this individual a day a week, so they are now all upset.

Not that it would have made any difference had they been told beforehand anyway.

If any of you care to stand on your heads to listen it would be appreciated

Talk of reorganisations prompts correspondence from Monty O'Burr, a colleague in another place.

You will be pleased to learn our restructure, too, is still incomplete. It is now celebrating its four and a halfth birthday. You can imagine what this is doing to staff morale, particularly as some of the jobs got severely ring fenced and those already doing them find themselves outside the fence.

I am still trying to work out why, but lots of things are outside my comprehension.

Human resource management at play.

The world is such a cheerful place when viewed from upside down

There are times lately when Milton's driven me barmy, making me wonder why he's doing stuff that I would have thought were within my remit and not always letting me know about what he's up to in the process. Before I get too pissed off with him I need to take into account our working realities in this land of lies and treacle: like everyone else, there are times when he needs to do something because it can be done not because it can be done by him.

I'm reminded of this today because we've been doing yet another Impact Assessment exercise. Lately we've been required to do Risk Impact Assessments, Equality Impact Assessments, Target Impact Assessments, Cultural Impact Assessments, Reading Goals Impact Assessments, oh, the list rolls on. If somebody were to tell Jim that there's a Two Weeks In Scarborough With A Drag Queen Called Bubbles Impact Assessment I dare say he wouldn't bat an eyelid (I'd like to think that I might).

This time it's a Customer Service Impact Assessment (the grammarians amongst you will have noticed the lack of 'doing' words). Working through the forms with Milton it's pretty apparent why he's getting frustrated and looking for Things That Can Be Done. Although he's held responsible for our reference library services he doesn't actually have any authority over stock selection and expenditure, staffing, local studies or any of reference libraries themselves.

In the circumstances...

Everything's coming down this weekendWhat time do you finish?

Day off today so I repair into town to avail myself of the January sales in Hannigan's Truss Boutique (abdomenal protectors 25% off). Lo! Bobbing up from behind the gentlemen's supports is Ken Barmy. He's taking a lunchbreak away from their routine madnesses.

"We're having a reorganisation!" he crows.

"Have you finished the last one yet?"

"Don't take the piss, it's not nice."

It must be like the bloody Cultural Revolution over in Pardendale.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a cauliflower

The current fad for renaming things has turned its attention to the Target Improvement Meetings, which have had more names than a serial fraudster. They're now called "Performance Monitoring Meetings."

"We've given up on improvement then, have we?" I ask Milton.

"Well, at least it's a more accurate description of what we do."

They looked up my postcode

On our management system if one of Catty Library's books, for example, gets returned at Dutch Bend it's given the label "returning to home location." Once it arrives back at Catty is should be discharged and it'll become "In" like the rest of the stuff on the shelves.

I've emailed all staff reminding them that all incoming stock needs to be discharged so that any rovers are returned and any reservations triggered. To emphasise the former I pointed out that there's currently over 3,200 items "returning to home location" and they can't all be on the library van ('cos that's still full of bog rolls and mop heads).

"What are you doing about all those books?" I'm asked by T.Aldous.

"Nothing."

"What happens to stock that's 'returning to home location'?"

"With any luck they arrive home. Out of my control. Not my problem."

Cry havok!

In an unaccustomed fit of planning we're talking about perhaps doing some events and activities themed on the First World War and the Armistice.

"I know a lady who can do a corn dolly demonstration," says Mary.

It's that stain you see on the underside of a labrador

The newspapers and telly are full of the brouhaha surrounding Peter Hain's failed bid to be deputy leader of the Labour Party. This puts our local idiocies into perspective: the amount of money "forgotten" about is the annual budget of any of our branch libraries -- staff, buildings maintenance and materiel -- and if any of us acted similarly we'd have had the bollocking of our lives.

The rules are different in the Westminster Village of course. Public library authorities across the country implement the People's Network (ouch! ouch! ouch!) and management systems migrations within time and within budget, something central government can only dream about. But their projects are always "successes" and we're always "inefficient and ineffectual."

Our friends across the water wouldn't know this but I would be breaking the law were I to comment further. As a local government officer I'm not allowed to publicly voice opinions that may be construed as political. This is one of Margaret Thatcher's laws which the Labour Party anathemised at the time but found convenient to hang onto once in power themselves. So I couldn't wonder whether somebody who can't manage his own private office should be running a complex department like Work & Pensions. It would be like making T.Aldous responsible for the Benefits Office.

The return of the Bog Roll Fairy

Seth takes a 'phone call from Pansy at Gypsy Lane, wanting lavatory requisites.

"I'll put some bog rolls on the van for you," he says.

"No, we can't have bog rolls."

"Why not?"

"We've got one of those new disabled toilets and we're not allowed to use bog rolls with it. We've got to use antiseptic wipes."

If we can find enough nails to pegs the sheets onto we may well find a use for the paper we can't recycle after all.

80 pages brimful of knowledge

Dances With Books points us to a nice example of a really useful staff notice. This reminds me of our last inspection.

The inspectors made a lot of noise about the proliferation of "Now then... no... no.. naughty... mustn't..." notices we have on display in our libraries. Their indignation was tempered a little once they came backstage and found that not only were there many more notices to staff than to the public, but they were also a good many degrees more patronising.

Pap

Helminthdale, like all English councils, has a government-imposed duty to increase the amount of recycling of waste.

Helminthdale Council charges itself commercial rates for bulk disposal of paper for recycling.

Helminthdale Council cannot afford to pay itself commercial rates for bulk disposal of paper for recycling.

Some paper waste is picked up at the Town Hall for recycling, at standard waste disposal rates. This service is not available to the Library Service, Planning, Social Services or Environmental Health, all of whom have offices not ten yards away from the Town Hall. The barrier being the transport costs.

Helminthdale is likely to fail its recycling targets and will probably be fined for its failure.

The fine for failing to meet recycling targets is ten times the commercial cost of its collection.

Discuss. Do not write on both sides of the paper at the same time.

At gunpoint in the rain

When the management structure for Sheep City was being set up the new directorate decided that they didn't want the Library Service including in the empire they were slicing off the old Leisure & Culture directorate "because it is a failing business" (this coming just after the Audit Commission said that they could "see no prospect of improvement in the Library Service while departmental resources are monopolised by non-statutory services").

I notice a recent quotation from the head honcho saying: "library services naturally fall into the cultural remit of our organisation."

This can only mean that the dodgems and gee-gaws have been losing money hand over fist again.

Stagnation of the liver

We'll have to submit a project request for a new spam filter. The spam we need to filter out comes from our IT section, recently outsourced to the venture capital enterprise Humgrummit, Vector & Bunion. Today's marvel of the age is a half-hourly update, complete with half-meg logo, telling IT section staff that their email isn't working.

As their email isn't working they're the only people on the network spared the half-hourly updates telling them that this is the case.

The Bog Roll Fairy cometh

Bronwyn's back from the latest expedition to Epiphany Library. The library's closed while they put a new floor and walls in and T.Aldous wants it clearing out by the end of the week so that the building contractors can start promptly on Monday.

We had all thought that the place had been cleared out but this morning your man declared that Seth and Bronwyn had to nip over to retrieve all the kitchen and cleaning gear, with especial emphasis on spoons and Windolene. And so it was that they've spent the past couple of hours loading the library van with cardboard boxes full of old mop heads, Vim and paper towels. Then they had to jam in the vacuum cleaners, brushes and big-sticks-with-a-hook-on-the-end-for-opening-high-windows-with.

"Coming back from Epiphany we must have looked like the Clampetts," said Bronwyn.

A line has been drawn, though:

"I know he told us to bring back all the toilet rolls but I've left a couple behind," says Bronwyn. "The builders need to be able to go to the toilet. In fact, I feel a bit mean about this; if I'm still feeling guilty about it in a few weeks' time I'll pop in and leave a couple more. I'll be like the Toilet Roll Fairy."

I am Spartacus!

A colleague in another place has told me that he's had unofficial word from his bosses that he might want to stop writing this blog.

Personally, I think the fact that any library service managers have such low self-esteem that they would willingly identify themselves with the clowns populating Helminthdale is sad beyond belief.

But it also means that my colleague must have a rich seam of stories that he'd like to share with us (this is a hint, nudge, nudge).

I was going to say that there is just one Helminthdale, but given a lot of the feedback I get from people working in the public libraries of three continents this is evidently untrue. I can only conclude that Helminthdale is a universal state of grace, a sort of Platonic ideal of a particular kind of public library service.

It follows, then, that I must be something similar. In that spirit I've made the cut-out-and-keep badge on the left. I thought we could all wear it on a given day as a mark of solidarity of experience.

Ah, but which day? I had thought St. Lone Ranger's Day (26th May), which this year falls on a Monday when we'd all need cheering up. But that seems a long way away. Then the blindingly obvious struck me. If we're to be true to our organisations and our managers there can only be one solution.

We would all have worn the badge on the 25th of December but we were on leave that day.

On the breeze that follows sunset I could hear that sad refrain

Milton and I are discussing the communication arrangements we're going to have to put in place for when the call centre takes over as the first line of telephone communication with the public.

"I know you keep saying that we're not very good at communicating within the service..."

"No, I said that communication within the service is crap. Just take the New Year's Afternoon Spectacular upstairs. How many of us down here knew about it?"

"What New Year's Afternoon Spectacular?"

Q.E.D.

Gormless farting skittles

Overheard:

"We really should do something about filling the reader development post, what with the National Year of Reading coming up."

"Could we get one of the work-experience graduates to do the project work?"

Gah... How about filling the bloody post, you only advertised it a couple of months ago.

The bombazene she wears is bulletproof

"Was that Henry Irving in your office yesterday?" asks Bronwyn.

"Yes," I reply.

"He's had another makeover, hasn't he?"

"It's that time of year again."

"I like doing storytime in local studies. You're always guaranteed a good audience because they make a point of really selling the event beforehand."

"Yes, they're very unprofessional like that."

Pillar to post

Having a look at the proposed plans for the refurbished Catty Library. The only new feature appears to be a new disabled toilet, replacing the staff room (which moves up into the attic, with the pigeons). Why no change in layout? The council's Heritage Planning Officer has forbidden any changes.

Service delivery in Helminthdale Council is always compromised by unnacountable Town Hall noddies.

If it were down to me we'd clear out completely, extend Carbootsale Library, which is ten minutes' walk down the Penkage Road, and have that as the main library for the Catty area. The Heritage Planning Officer could then have the old Catty Library as a late Xmas present.

Sitting the baby on the boiled ham

Frog's had a few children's librarians in for a meeting. A couple of them were reminiscing about the good old days:

"Remember how we weren't allowed to buy 'Topsy & Tim' when they first started being published? We couldn't buy them because they didn't have any noses in the pictures..."

"And we couldn't buy any Enid Blyton. She'd written so many books they couldn't possibly be any good..."

"I remember going to a children's library meeting once with Piggy Throgmorton. When he came out he said to me:

"All children's librarians should be made to go on the game. If it turned out that they were any good they'd be making a better living out of it. If not, then at least they'll have seen something of life."

Very unreconstituted was Piggy. Mind you, my sympathy was with him that day."

An olde English folk song

Henry Irving floats in from Sheep City. He's had another makeover and looks like the repertory edition of Raskalnikov.

"We're having a new feature display in local studies. We're going back to the seventies."

"Back?!?"

He's currently having to act as go-between with the Museum Service, something he's enjoying immensely (he has my sympathy, I got that t-shirt about a decade ago).

"I know you think that librarians are precious about being 'professional' but they're not a patch on some of the people in the Museum Service who keep telling me that they're professionals."

"Oh yes... Are they looking down on you because you've not got a Museums Diploma?"

"If I suggest anything they say I don't know anything about it and then about two months later, when it's too late to make a difference they'll pipe up with the same idea. And they're so bloody cavalier!"

"How's it going with the new software?"

"It's being installed this week and we're training on it the week after next. I want to copy the local studies digital files over to the new database but I'm not sure... Tell me, am I being paranoid? Ideally I'd want to put all the high-definition pictures on there but I'm scared of what the museum people would do with them."

"Don't they understand the concept of digital rights management?"

"What do you think?"

"I'd just let them have access to the thumbnails."

Thinking on, I think I'd degrade the thumbnails before letting the museum folk near them.

Grandson of secret gig

Frog and Salome have decided that they're going to have a children's treasure hunt upstairs in lending but they're not going to tell anybody about it. To increase the pleasure they've scheduled it for when Doreen's covering the enquiry desk.

A recently detonated circus

Raccoonville and Roadkill libraries are closing for a while at the end of the month. Raccoonville's the latest library to be getting a new toilet (they've had to shift half a ton of Dutch Bend Bystanders in preparation). Roadkill's moving to new premises next door.

I circulate an email telling staff about the closures and the arrangements we're making concerning due dates, reservations, etc. I get an emailed reply from Jim:

I didn't know about this. Then again, I am just a member of Policy Team. (-:

Secret Santa

I was telling Daisy Duck about Frog's encounter with yesterday's secret gig upstairs.

"Is that what they wanted Amelia for? I had to jiggle the rota about so that she could go over to Helminthdale to sing carols."

"You jest! Christmas carols at a new year's event?"

"Oh, this was last week."

Standing there all cold and shiverywaiting sadly for the next delivery

The Acquisitions Team are piled high with boxes of incoming stock and two hundred-line long invoices (we approach yet another financial year end with last-minute panic-buying of lending stock to meet the targets). So imagine their joy at the latest one from Dagmar at Doggedly:

"I need you to process those books quickly because my reading group needs them."

"Well, they won't be done today, we're snowed under."

"But I need them now. They're doing this title in their next meeting."

"When's that?"

"The twenty-fifth."

"I might do them early next week."

"But I like to have them at least a month before the meeting."

"Well it's not happening this week."

Mobile nightmare units

"While you were out Milton came down and took away a printer from your store room," Noreen tells me.

"Thanks. I might find out what he's doing with it some time."

"Why don't you ask him?"

"I can't be arsed any more. Apparently it's none of my business."

Son of secret gig

Frog's covering on the enquiry desk upstairs in lending. Salome comes back in laden with mince pies and orange juice "for the New Year's Afternoon Spectacular."

"What New Year's Afternoon Spectacular?"

"Oh God, not another one nobody's told anybody about! I assumed the publicity went out last week when I was off."

"Afraid not."

The afternoon was saved by Norma going out into the shopping centre and virtually dragging customers into the library.

Frog mentioned the lack of publicity to Doreen, who's the responsible adult for the library.

"Well, there were notices up in the lending library all week."

From the mouths of babes

A little child wanders out of the children's library and looks around for her mother, who's getting some books for herself. Rather than panicking or running round the library in alarm she calmly approaches one of the library assistants.

"Where do you keep the mums?"

Optimistically-titled

A happy new year to all our readers.

It's to be hoped that 2008 will be a better year in Helminthdale but all the available evidence suggests that's a forlorn hope.

I hope you fare better.